


leave your breath behind

by unos



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-02
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-12 20:17:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13554798
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unos/pseuds/unos
Summary: “I thought I could get it back,” Yuzu says, “If I did this the right way, I thought maybe I could find the piece I left behind last time and be... I don’t know.”“Satisfied?” Keiji asks.“Whole,” Yuzu replies.





	leave your breath behind

**Author's Note:**

> -  
> the title is a translation fragment of a very popular song we all know  
>  _...voilà le portrait sans retouche de l'homme auquel j'appartiens..._  
>  subtlety is for people with pride

* * *

 

 

He planned it so jet lag would hit him after the free, so he could go to practice and then competitions energized and ready. It means that he goes to bed at a weird local time. He’s got his hotel room, a small luxury he can afford this time around.

It’s clean and quiet and nice. It’s nice not to have the reverberations of pop music coming from the other rooms, the laughter and the yelling and the odd sex sound.

Maybe it’s too quiet. Too sterile. He turns and turns in his sheets until they stop feeling crisp. At some point he must fall asleep.

 

 

“Some of us have to practice,” Shoma tells him. His face is blank, the bland, pleasant expression he carries when he’s trying to hide turmoil. If Yuzu asked him to smile right now, it would a grimace.

It’s his voice that betrays him: high, strained, shaky. But he still sounds firm, and he turns his back, and he is leaving, out of the door before Yuzu can say anything.

Practice time is early in the day. Yuzu knows this because the information is pinned on his notice board at home: every slot he missed marked vivid red.

The rest of the room is pointedly looking away. Kana shifts in her seat, smiles at him when Yuzu turns to her.

“It is good to see you!” She says. Always willing to keep the peace, Kana. Chris, in the corner on his phone, doesn’t even look up. Keiji, next to her on the couch, looks slightly shell shocked. He looks like Yuzu feels: overwhelmed, uncomfortable, out of place.

This hadn’t been the plan. The plan had been to arrive a day before he has to skate, hang with his team, learn how it’s been, for them. Learn what is impossible to see from the outside. He imagined falling into their group like into a warm hug, letting the feeling propel him into the competition like it had last time.

Kaori comes in, Satton by her side. They are talking, smiling. Kaori smiles when she sees him, big and bright and welcoming.

Something drops in Yuzu’s chest, heavy and a little wet, like a stone into a puddle. It brings up a cloud of something ugly and grey that spreads through his chest.

“Yuzu!” Kaori says, “you’re here! Hi! How are you? Are you ready for tomorrow?”

It’s like being suffocated in kindness. It’s not what he had planned on.

 

 

Watching Shoma struggle through his run-through is painful to say the least. He’s the color of cottage cheese. There is none of the usual soft fluidity in his movements.

It’s too early.

 

 

He needs to focus.

 

 

“It’s weird,” Keiji says, lying on his back on his bed. “We expect it to change our lives, and it does, somehow. But it’s also just another competition.”

Yuzu nods. His back cracks, and Keiji’s head appears over the edge of the mattress.

“Did you just break your neck?”

“No,” Yuzu laughs. “It feels good actually.”

“Ok great! Because imagine the newspapers: Hanyu Yuzuru, found dead on his teammate’s floor!”

“Would there be pictures?”

“Yeah, of your jumping face.”

“Ugh, I die ugly, then,” Yuzu laughs. It comes out hacking, sort of desperate at the edges.

Keiji leans his chin on his arms and looks down at him. His laughter fades.

“Are you staying for the rest of it?”

Yuzu hums. His lungs ache, a little, like the laughter forced something loose and it’s bouncing around in him. “I’m not sure.”

“You have the gala.”

“I know,” Yuzu says. “I kind of don’t want to.”

Keiji nods, slowly. Yuzu can see that he doesn’t understand.

“It does change you,” Yuzu says, after a moment of silence. “It’s not the competition, not really. It’s like you leave something on the ice after you leave it. A part of you, something vital.”

Keiji hums, half agreement, half a question.

“I thought I could get it back,” Yuzu says, “If I did this the right way, I thought maybe I could find the piece I left behind last time and be... I don’t know.”

“Satisfied?” Keiji asks.

“Whole,” Yuzu says.

 

 

He stays. Of course he stays.

It’s not for the gala, even though he agrees to skate. It’s not because Kaori asks him to, or because Satton comes to him, with quiet words and big questions.

It’s not because Kana pulled him into a hug after the short and told him she was proud of him, or that everybody got together after every segment of the competition, shared food and criticism and quiet support. 

It’s not because Shoma leaves the room every time Yuzuru enters it.

It’s because Keiji asks him, just before Yuzu leaves to go to his room on the other side of the Olympic village, a question Yuzu can’t quite answer.

“Was it worth it?”

 

 

He doesn’t know where to begin to answer the question, is the problem. Each part of it presents an angle that Yuzu is unprepared to confront.

What does “it” refer to? The effort he put into his performance? The pain? Blood, injury? Every year or Yuzu’s life, from the moment he put on skates to the moment he finished his program? The past four years specifically? The past few months? Yesterday? _It_.

What.

Worth.

He can’t quantify that word. How do you measure worth. Where do you begin, where do you end, how do you make sure not to throw the efforts of all your competitors under the bus.

Getting to do this again was worth it. Whatever _it_ is.

Was it?

 

 

There is a lot of time, between his last competition and the gala, that wants filling. He makes use of those practice slots offered to him.

He watches Keiji, finally growing into himself in a way that Yuzu finds fascinating: there has always been potential in his skating, of course, but he’s always been more of a friend than a competitor. This hasn’t changed, though Keiji’s approach has, his skating has, his jumps have. He’s assured in what he can do, now. He's a spark on the ice. 

Shoma, on the other side of the rink, isn’t. Yuzu used to think he was self-assured: it’s in the way his body seems to balance only on the ice, find stability and expression. In the way he moves his fingertips when he skates, the way his face changes into fierceness and confidence. 

Yuzu rarely watches his competitors skate in person. He pours over streams, recordings, but usually, practice precedes competition, and he doesn’t pay attention to anyone but himself. The other two men on the ice are a little less polished, a little less technically proficient than his team mates, but there’s the same passion, the same reckless abandon in every stroke of their blade against the ice. You need to have that, to be here. To get to this point, you don’t need to be the best, but you need to invest all that you have: time, energy, effort, talent.

 

 

Shoma and Keiji are talking, softly, on the other side of the changing room. They gravitate to each other, familiar and comfortable, which is interesting. 

Shoma’s back is turned to Yuzu, so he can’t see his face. He can see Keiji smiling, nodding. 

“Good practice,” Yuzu says. Shoma turns, regards him. Nods.

Keiji, on Shoma’s other side, laughs awkwardly.

 

 

He has prepared a new exhibition piece: if anything, the time Yuzuru spent off-ice was good for that. He listened to a lot of new music. He thought of movements, ideas, concepts, costumes. He talked to Jeff about it, and when Jeff didn’t understand it, he took it to Shae.

Her choreography often feels as if it was really his all along. It isn’t that Yuzu suggests very much, but like she already knows. He explains his idea, and she understands and translates his thoughts into motion with an ease that makes Yuzuru jealous, almost. Like she understands his body and his soul better than him, like she can ease emotion out of him with a three turn and a touch.

 

 

He grows familiar with the inevitable silence that falls whenever he joins a group of his friends for any activity.

He also grows familiar with the sight of Shoma’s back.

“I wish I could do that,” Satton says, “just trust a partner like that.”

She convinced him to go see Kana and Chris compete. Yuzu doesn’t fully understand ice dance, if he’s honest. He understands the beauty of it, the quality of the movement, each element and lift its own little piece of the puzzle, but the scoring, the judging? That is beyond him.

His personal tastes tend to affect him too much to stay objective, perhaps.

He catches himself drifting as couple after couple skates. Satton cheers, quietly but consistently.

Two rows ahead, Shoma’s head it tipping forwards. His shoulders droop until Keiji elbows him into the side and laughs.

Kaori turns up just before Kana skates onto the ice, hand in hand with Chris. She presses herself onto Satton’s seat, and takes her hand. Their knuckles are white, they are pressing their palms together so hard.

Kana does great.

 

 

“You have to stop lurking,” Shoma says to him, after another bout of practice.

“I’m not!”

“You are doing... something.”

Shoma pulls his trainers onto his feet, and turns his back. Yuzu swallows, tries to think of a way to defend himself without sounding like he is defensive. He can't. 

"I don't care," Shoma says, as if to himself. "Just stop.”

 

 

Every time he jumps, his knee and ankle ache. Keiji’s question echoes in his head, again and again and again and again. He hesitates going into the lutz although he knows he can land it. He has landed it. 

Was it worth it?

What?

Being selfish? Being isolated? Being in pain?

Was it, though?

He lands it. Of course he lands it.

And he loves it, the rush, the adrenaline, the way the muscles in his thighs burn and how stable and strong his back feels. He is invincible, unbeatable; he could take on the world and win.

Worth it? An echo.

 

 

“You’re different,” Satton says, when Yuzu hugs her small frame to his. She did well. She did exceptionally. He’s brimming with it, the power of her performance, the attention to detail, the story itself and the strength she needed to carry it to him. She’s uncompromising. She is shaking.

“Am I?” Yuzu asks, and lets her go. She holds on for a second longer. “I’m proud of you.”

She smiles. There’s something in it he doesn’t quite understand. She moves on.

 

 

The hotel room grows confining, and the strange antiseptic smell of it doesn’t fade. He didn’t mean to stay here the entire time, but everyone else had divvied up the apartment between them and he didn’t want to bunk with anyone without being explicitly invited to. 

It just didn’t come up, and so here he is: early evening light coloring the white curtains and beige carpet pink and orange. He watches it sink: there’s beauty in that, the slow passing of time turned into a spectacle.

He wants to be a part of it. Perhaps one of the slowly appearing stars, or maybe the thin sickle of the moon that is visible before the sun even begins to set. It is always right there, but unobtrusive.

He shakes his head at himself. That’s ridiculous.

He’s always wanted to be the center of attention.

 

 

He expects one of Shoma’s usual exhibition pieces. This Town, perhaps.

Instead, Shoma comes to practice with Stéphane in tow. The music is familiar, slow, grating, French.

He’s seen this one: not in person, of course, but recordings. Shoma doesn’t perform this one often if at all, he has said that it is too mature for him to tackle.

Something must have changed, while he had his back turned to Yuzu. 

Usually, Yuzu doesn’t lean against the boards to watch other skaters run-throughs when that its precious time for him to practice, but he finds himself stopping, finds himself watching Shoma weave through motions that come to him slowly, that don’t look like he has fully befriended them yet.

Yuzu waits for the click, for him to fall into it. It doesn’t come.

“I like your exhibition piece,” he tells Shoma’s back later. Shoma’s shoulders rise to his ears and sink down. He doesn't turn around. 

“Yeah, thanks. It’s nice. You should talk to Stéphane about it.”

He is being brushed off, again. But it’s gentler, somehow. So Yuzu goes and does.

 

 

“I was surprised,” Stéphane tells him. First, of course, his eyebrows rose in surprise, and something changed behind his eyes. Like something fell into place for him, too. “He told me before that he doesn’t understand the piece. ‘How can you be in love and unhappy at the same time?’ he asked. He’s quite innocent, isn’t he?”

Yuzu wants to nod, but it’s not entirely... Shoma isn’t innocent: he has a mean sense of humor and sometimes, Yuzuru thinks Shoma understands the workings of the world better than him. It's more that Shoma has never been in love. But he won’t say so, now. He might not have all the facts, so. He can’t.

“But it’s good, now,” Stéphane continues without ever waiting for an answer, “I think he has learned, over time.”

“What is the song really about?” Yuzu asks, just to make sure he understands. He could look up the translation, probably. But things get lost in translation.

Stéphane hums. “I think it’s about loving a version of someone that isn’t quite real. It's real enough, of course, but it is always mixed with expectation, with idealization. It's about being afraid to look at them properly, of seeing the reality. It's a little bit about being happy with just a part of someone perfect, perhaps. That’s why it’s slow, a little melancholy, you know? On the surface, there is passion and love, but deeper, there is fear, and impatience but still, always, passion.”

Yuzuru nods. He understands that, to love something fully without ever knowing it completely.

 

 

It’s like a weight that grounds him: the eyes of the audience, the show lights reflecting off his costume. It’s a return to himself, almost. They scream for him, and then, when he is in the middle of the ice, a hush falls over the crowd.

He didn’t get to perform to his people, this season. His fans, sure. They travel everywhere for him. But not his people, not his country, not _home_. This is almost close enough to count.

His music begins, and he spins a story. There’s softness, and anger weaving into it, a madness that translates into harsh, abrupt stops. It stops as soon as it begins, melts into something ambivalent, difficult. Complexity: love and frustration as two forces pushing against each other, keeping whatever is caught between them afloat in a limbo.

The music coalesces into something passionate, faster, like a heartbeat speeding up, and that is where they mix: you can love something, and you can be frustrated by it, and it will make you burn brighter.

One feeling feeds the other: there isn’t a way for him to have one without the other. That’s what he will take with him, when he leaves the ice.

He won’t ever have it all. But it is worth it.

He leaves something behind, too. He always does.

 

**Author's Note:**

> please leave encouraging comments that might cheer me up because I'm a sadsack with too many doubts and feelings, thanks


End file.
